Esquire. What I've learned: Tim Burton

Before I started directing, I barely spoke. That was what Edward Scissorhands was about: having a lot of feelings but not being able to project them.

Most monster movies are not horror movies. They’re about outsiders. I never saw Frankenstein or King Kong or the Creature from the Black Lagoon as bad guys. They were the good guys. It was always the humans that were the motherfuckers. It was the bad B-movie actor dressed in a rubber suit who made me almost cry when he got killed.

Once, when I was a child, I faked an alien spaceship crash landing in the nearby park. I took a lot of weird-looking debris and crud and just threw it around a wooded area. I made alien footprints, and I convinced these younger kids that a spacecraft had crashed. Another time, I laid out a bunch of clothes in a pool and convinced some kids that I got into a fight with a guy and he fell in the pool, but the people who owned the pool had put too much acid in it and the guy had disintegrated when he landed. It was always the kids in the lower grades that could be convinced. Now I get to exorcise whatever demons I have by making movies. Moviemaking is like an expensive form of therapy. Only you don’t have to pay for it. Other people pay for it.

I’ve always been a bit more comfortable with my subconscious and not so comfortable when I think about things too much. It’s like when I doodle. That’s when I know it means something to me on some weird level, as opposed to sitting down with the idea of drawing a skeleton. Say I’m on the phone, just sitting around, doodling. I’ll look at what I’ve done and think, Oh, that’s a strange character. Then I’ll notice myself doing it over and over. Those are the ones that have the most power for me, because they’re coming from within.

People have said to me, “You either have a lot of confidence or you’re completely insane.” In the case of Sweeney Todd, we made an R-rated musical. I mean, the very term musical strikes fear in the hearts of studio executives. No matter how many recent successes there have been, it still gives ‘em the creeps. Then to make it R-rated? With blood? But I’ve got to say, I enjoyed making this one more than many others.

There are people who pretend like they know movies. But if somebody really knew movies, every film he made would be a success.

When I did Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, it was on several of the ten-worst-movies-of-the-year lists. Then, a few years later, the same critics who put it on those lists looked back and called it a classic. And I go, “What are you talking about? You said it was one of the ten worst movies of the year. Now it’s a classic?” So you learn that things have a way of balancing themselves out.

You can argue with somebody who says, I know this and I know that. But you can’t argue with passion.

In one of the London newspapers, there was an article that Helena and I were trying to get permission to build a fantasyland in our garden, some kind of amazing gypsy caravan. First of all, our garden is about the size of this sitting area. And second, the newspaper showed a picture of an area that looked like what a homeless person would stay in. It’s hilarious, really. They think that I’m weird, and she’s got this reputation for dressing terribly. Every other week there’s a breaking story in a newspaper under the headline: Helena Bonham Carter Dressed Like Shit. So it’s like we’ve got this reputation for being the neighborhood weirdos.